Motivations for naming: The development of a toponymic typology for Australian placenames

Abstract

One of the main obstacles to having a meaningful discussion on, or analysis of, placenaming practices of a region or an era is the absence of an effective, consistent and standardized typology for toponym specifics. Surprisingly few attempts have been made to construct such a typology. Of those which have been developed, almost all show inconsistencies in their structure and include categories which are too wide or too narrow, which overlap with each other, or deal only with indigenous place names. In this paper, we review existing typologies and then propose a classification scheme for the Australian context based on the motivation for the naming of the feature in question. © American Name Society 2011.